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House of Commons Committee advises end to NHS funding of homeopathy
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Moon Cat
9577 posts

Edited Feb 25, 2010, 02:53
Re: House of Commons Committee advises end to NHS funding of homeopathy
Feb 25, 2010, 02:43
Fairy nuff then. Leave that in the 11th dimension

See, although I can understand you frustration when you find yourself dealin with what you percieve as pseudo-science and philosophising, you should in a way be prepared to grit your teeth a tad and, as some one is want to say 'deal with it' ;^). The reason I say this is that there is everychance, when the weirdness factor in certain disciplines DOES get that weird, it's gonna a require a shifting of the psychic goal posts (dont go AGH just yet), from all and sundry, scientist and layman alike, just to attempt to investigate and illustrate. And that'd gonna require debate that will drive everyone bonkers I'm sure.

Plus, and this is important from the perspective of getting funding. A populist approach in some sciences, as vulgar as it might seem, is partly necessary simply to get it out there why these researches are important and why they should be done. Now, given that that kind of discourse is going to be spread across the intellectual landscape - you know, from hardcore theorist to a bloke reading Wired to someone writing the cheque and beyond - then it's almost inevitable that there's gonna be cultural clashes and diversions into random philosophising along the way, as painful and annoying as that might be, simply to get things moving. And it really is selling ideas in a 'different language' and that's fucking hard in most disciplines.

You know how S Hawking (and bear with me on this) said we are gonna have a unified theory and then a few years later said, actually, looking at it, probably not. That is at once disappointing and then quite exciting really.
Cos, as I was trying to say, the implications with that, and other stuff isn't so much "We will never know" but rather "we will never know unless we literally change our thinking processes, and it might not be possible...at this point".
And yeah, maybe it IS psuedo philosophising, but so what really? Simply considering the notion that our perceptions, our very way of going about things is going to have to evolve into something other if we want to understand - well, I think that's really tantalising. In fact, you could say, that , in populist terms at least, science is on the cusp (relative to history) in engaging in and with philosophy, or at least philosophical processes in a way that it hasn't since ye olde days when scientists were 'philosophers'. That, to me, is terribly exciting. I certainly don't mean abandon all rationality, practice and process ye who enter by the way. I just mean it feels 'next step'ish. you know? It implies a potentiallity is there for us if we are flexible enough to grasp at it. I imagine there will be decades of false starts and dead ends, but the thought that it is OUT there, knowledge and newness of thought and concept is quite exciting, even to a pleb like me.

Thanks for heads up on the book. Sounds inneresting, flawed or otherwise.

ps I love it in some books when they have graphics trying to illustrate some of the 'weird' in theories. I feel for the guy tryna describe the brief and the guy who has to illustrate it. You can sometimes sense the "Well, no it should sort of look like....Uh...I dunno...it's got these....erm" Artist " What if I do it in blue, what if....aaaagh!" 8^)
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